Romain wrote:I hope it's a good list for you because for me, it's an another world list

Well from your list, I infer that you're purposefully avoiding the topics where AMers discuss recent music, so you shouldn't feel too surprised after that...

Solange is Beyoncé's sister, and she authored what several people think is the best album of the year (it IS awesome, although it's not my own album of the year). But "Cranes in the Sky" off it is the best song I've heard this year.

Going through the playlist, the top 10 really isn't clicking with me this year. I wouldn't be surprised if nothing cracks my top 250 this year (which I don't think has happened...ever). Hopefully there's some secret gem waiting for me somewhere.

Romain wrote:I only heard one song out of ten this year. It's getting worse and worse each years.

And actually, you didn't even, since "Lazarus" was released in 2015...

No, OK, all sarcasms aside (sorry, I come from a family of smartasses), your opposition de principe to hip-hop and modern r'n'b will necessarily make you feel more and more isolated, in an era where basically hip-hop is the new rock and modern r'n'b the new pop. If you want to catch up, opening your horizons feels like the only option; I hated both genres like you in the past, and I don't anymore. But like I said in another topic, only do it if you feel a need to.

From the top 10, Angel Olsen and Mitski might be artists you may like no matter what, as they do rock music.

Paul is doing the "Mannequin Challenge," which was a trend for about two seconds this year where people (famous and otherwise) took short moving-camera videos of themselves in mannequin-like poses; some are quite elaborate, involving dozens of people, and some are just goofy ones like this, in which one of the actual Beatles does the challenge as the song "Black Beatles" plays. If Paul had found a way to have Ringo in the video too that would just about be the most awesome thing ever.

Paul is doing the "Mannequin Challenge," which was a trend for about two seconds this year where people (famous and otherwise) took short moving-camera videos of themselves in mannequin-like poses; some are quite elaborate, involving dozens of people, and some are just goofy ones like this, in which one of the actual Beatles does the challenge as the song "Black Beatles" plays. If Paul had found a way to have Ringo in the video too that would just about be the most awesome thing ever.

Pierre wrote:No, OK, all sarcasms aside (sorry, I come from a family of smartasses), your opposition de principe to hip-hop and modern r'n'b will necessarily make you feel more and more isolated, in an era where basically hip-hop is the new rock and modern r'n'b the new pop. If you want to catch up, opening your horizons feels like the only option; I hated both genres like you in the past, and I don't anymore. But like I said in another topic, only do it if you feel a need to.

It's clearly the "problem"... I'm more and more open for rap/hip-hop, but, I have to confess that modern r'n'b is, for the moment, not my cup of tea at all (and this "autotune push to the max" era doesn't help).

Pierre wrote:No, OK, all sarcasms aside (sorry, I come from a family of smartasses), your opposition de principe to hip-hop and modern r'n'b will necessarily make you feel more and more isolated, in an era where basically hip-hop is the new rock and modern r'n'b the new pop. If you want to catch up, opening your horizons feels like the only option; I hated both genres like you in the past, and I don't anymore. But like I said in another topic, only do it if you feel a need to.

It's clearly the "problem"... I'm more and more open for rap/hip-hop, but, I have to confess that modern r'n'b is, for the moment, not my cup of tea at all (and this "autotune push to the max" era doesn't help).

Modern r'n'b was a difficult genre for me to get into at the start because of how unimaginative and formulaic it was for more than a decade. There were some highs like Beyoncé's "Crazy in Love" or Amerie's "1 Thing" but my interest in it was still very restrained. Frank Ocean's Channel Orange ("Pyramids" is just wonderful) and Beyoncé's self-titled album as well as the songs "Climax" by Usher and "Losing You" by Solange were instrumental in switching my view, as these explore a more atmospheric production and in the case of Frank Ocean in particular they are more thorough in exposing the life of black people in modern society. Today, the best works in this genre have an adventurousness that is really appealing, just like veganvalentine expressed in another topic. This year, the albums released by Solange, Beyoncé, Frank Ocean and even Rihanna (just listen to her singing on "Higher"!) are all very engaging.

I only heard one song out of ten this year. It's getting worse and worse each years.

I hope it's a good list for you because for me, it's an another world list

Going through the same thing myself - also more of a rock over Hip Hop guy, though I like both, but not super excited about where Hip Hop/mainstream R&B/Pop are right now stylistically - but for me, any way you slice it - it was just a down year for singles - even two of the three rock songs to crack the top ten Mitski's American Girl and Angel Olsen's Shut Up Kiss Me aren't really all that special - compare them to the gems Courtney Barnett and Sleater-Kinney were throwing out last year and the comparison becomes almost laughable those 2015 songs are so much better (though to be fair, both those 2016 songs come from very good overal albums with far better songs that just didn't gain traction with the press - give Angel Olsen's Sisters or Woman a spin). But if your more of a rock fan, as I said in another thread, the only album out there to rally around this year was Car Seat Headrest's Teens Of Denial - hopefully you've heard that one, if not, definitely seek it out a more rocking, drug-use oriented take on the old Jonathan Richman Modern Lovers sad sack teen angst vibe with absolutely hysterical lyrics.

For my money, only truly elite level songs I heard all year were Jesus Alone, I Need You and Distant Sky off Skeleton Tree, Four of the opening six tracks from Car Seat Headrest's Teens Of Denial, Lazarus, Cold Little Heart and Love and Hate from Michael Kiwanuka, Cranes In The Sky, Lucinda William's Dust, Opener from Margo Price's album, You Want It Darker, Three Sides of Nazareth from Nicolas Jaar, Danny Brown's Dance In The Water, the aforemention Sister by Angel Olsen, The Monkees Me and Magdalena, Whitney's Follow and Sturgil Simpson's Welcome To Earth. That's it.

"Hands of Time." I wholeheartedly agree with this - what an incredible opening track. It sets the tone for the rest of Price's very fine album, but it's so brilliant that it kind of overshadows the rest of it as well.

Illiniq wrote:For my money, only truly elite level songs I heard all year were Jesus Alone, I Need You and Distant Sky off Skeleton Tree, Four of the opening six tracks from Car Seat Headrest's Teens Of Denial, Lazarus, Cold Little Heart and Love and Hate from Michael Kiwanuka, Cranes In The Sky, Lucinda William's Dust, Opener from Margo Price's album, You Want It Darker, Three Sides of Nazareth from Nicolas Jaar, Danny Brown's Dance In The Water, the aforemention Sister by Angel Olsen, The Monkees Me and Magdalena, Whitney's Follow and Sturgil Simpson's Welcome To Earth. That's it.

Romain wrote:For my money, only truly elite level songs I heard all year were Jesus Alone, I Need You and Distant Sky off Skeleton Tree, Four of the opening six tracks from Car Seat Headrest's Teens Of Denial, Lazarus, Cold Little Heart and Love and Hate from Michael Kiwanuka, Cranes In The Sky, Lucinda William's Dust, Opener from Margo Price's album, You Want It Darker, Three Sides of Nazareth from Nicolas Jaar, Danny Brown's Dance In The Water, the aforemention Sister by Angel Olsen, The Monkees Me and Magdalena, Whitney's Follow and Sturgil Simpson's Welcome To Earth. That's it.

I agree with so much of this. Personally, I think that Michael Kiwanuka's two songs (Cold Little Heart and Love & Hate) should without a doubt be in the top 50. Margo Price's Hands of Time is undoubtedly the best country song of the year, and should also be in the top 50, in my opinion, but so many of the publications would never consider putting a country song on their list. And Sister is the best song on Angel Olsen's album, in my onion. And finally, I think Sturgil Simpson has been very under-represented in the song lists.

Romain wrote:For my money, only truly elite level songs I heard all year were Jesus Alone, I Need You and Distant Sky off Skeleton Tree, Four of the opening six tracks from Car Seat Headrest's Teens Of Denial, Lazarus, Cold Little Heart and Love and Hate from Michael Kiwanuka, Cranes In The Sky, Lucinda William's Dust, Opener from Margo Price's album, You Want It Darker, Three Sides of Nazareth from Nicolas Jaar, Danny Brown's Dance In The Water, the aforemention Sister by Angel Olsen, The Monkees Me and Magdalena, Whitney's Follow and Sturgil Simpson's Welcome To Earth. That's it.

I agree with so much of this. Personally, I think that Michael Kiwanuka's two songs (Cold Little Heart and Love & Hate) should without a doubt be in the top 50. Margo Price's Hands of Time is undoubtedly the best country song of the year, and should also be in the top 50, in my opinion, but so many of the publications would never consider putting a country song on their list. And Sister is the best song on Angel Olsen's album, in my onion. And finally, I think Sturgil Simpson has been very under-represented in the song lists.

And the most overrated songs, in my opinion are as follows:Broccoli by D.R.A.M.It Means I Love You, Jessy LanzaPanda, DesiignerOoouuu, Young M.A.

Vincent was my personal favorite song of 2016.

But since last post have been working through the spotify list you guys have wonderfully put together, trying to find those gems I've missed, and while I've found a few, for the most part my attitude towards 2016 has hardened even more aggressively towards the negative.

Though it had its moments, my gut is now telling me 2016 was one of the genuine low mark music years of the last 50, and I do feel, quite strongly, that we're going through a period that will be laughed at and derided 10, 20 years down the line - with all these murky, pulse lacking hip-hop beats, shallow EDM, bland Diva electro and R&B pop, and the omnipresent autotune nonsense that's dominating so much we're hearing today. And I don't necessarily blame the artists - a lot of these developments are relatively and genuinely stylistically new, and we all want artists that gravitate towards the new and experimental, you can even argue that in many ways music is a lot more forward looking right now than it was in the height of the retro-indie era a decade back, but in the end it doesn't make this era any less sucky.

Like the prog/disco dominated 73-76, or those antiseptic digitial production early CD years of the 80s, or just really bad years like 98, it is just hard for me to see history looking back on this present era any other way...and Good Lord, that top 10 song list we're looking at here is quite possibly the worst top 10 songs for any year since 1964. And I will grant that the top ten we see here is as much a reflection of troubling issues with the tastemakers of this era as it is a reflection of the actual output of the musicians of this moment, as there are some amazing songs from this year far outside the top ten that just didn't receive as much attention, but still songs like Black Beatles and Work aren't just mediocre, they're flat-out shit, with only Lazarus and Cranes In The Sky, and I guess maybe Formation (though I don't care much for it personally) feeling like they will have any lasting historical impact.

Anyway, sorry to be such a Debbie Downer, I'll give it a rest now after two flaming posts in this thread unless some of you want to carry on this conversation further, but God, to my ears 2016 was just such a crap year overall I feel it has to be called out.

The only silver lining is historically brutal periods like this are usually followed by periods of fantastic, widespread creativity in response.

Yeah I mean "Work" is a good argument for why today's pop music is shit.

Not that I agree with that statement, but I just don't like that song at all. Rihanna's vocals are so reluctant, or whatever the right word is.

I feel like in circa 2007 popular music was underrated and some indie stuff was overrated, so I was glad when the trend started of critics including more popular music to lists, but now it's gone too far.

Just my opinion.

Edit: I guess looking at the list overall, it has its share of "odd" picks, so that's good.

PlasticRam wrote:Yeah I mean "Work" is a good argument for why today's pop music is shit.

Not that I agree with that statement, but I just don't like that song at all. Rihanna's vocals are so reluctant, or whatever the right word is.

I feel like in circa 2007 popular music was underrated and some indie stuff was overrated, so I was glad when the trend started of critics including more popular music to lists, but now it's gone too far.

Just my opinion.

Edit: I guess looking at the list overall, it has its share of "odd" picks, so that's good.

I agree completely. "Work" is a really bad song, and it's not all that common for me to think that the songs in the critic's top 10 are outright bad. Mediocre maybe. But bad? "Work" is among a small group here.

In fact, it's actually really hard for me to see songs like "Work", "Black Beatles", and "One Dance" landing in the critic's top 10 had they been released 10 years ago. This recent trend towards poptimism is just awful if you ask me. Not that there's anything wrong with pop music gaining critical accolades (two of my top 10 songs of 2016 are as pop as they get, Tegan and Sara's "Boyfriend" and Kero Kero Bonito's "Trampoline"). But I think that the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of pop, and now the most insipid pop tunes are being treated as these amazing works of music when they really aren't. I mean, how many devout music listeners actually have "Work" or "Black Beatles" or "One Dance" in their top 10?

I wish we could just get back to some sort of balance, where the worlds of indie and pop were treated fairly, without any real bias from the critics in either direction. The supreme irony here is that poptimism is supposedly a rebellious position, when in actuality it isn't. Those who most champion poptimism may think that they're doing something bold by putting a song like "Work" on the same level as the latest Radiohead tune. But they aren't. Poptimism is now the default position, and if you think we should expect a little more from our pop music beyond "you gotta work work work work work work work work work work work work work", well that just makes you a rockist. Or an elitist. Or any other sort of "-ist".

Hmm...I actually like "Black Beatles." But both songs involving Drake (and the #1 for last year) are things I truly don't get. I guess I just don't get Drake. What is the appeal? He's so boring, and he sounds so bored with his subject matter. None of it rings true for me. With "Black Beatles," I buy the energy and I like the production, even if it can be taken as shallow (many classic songs are comparably shallow, but 'Black Beatles' has a distinct attitude about it). But Drake's work feels like someone who has been given a platform to say nothing much at all.